Friday, September 14, 2007

Ideas for Conquering Throwaway Culture

Two main ideas:

Create more value:
-Higher prices create more percieved value, but somehow I don't think this will be the answer, because high-priced objects are not as available to middle and lower class people.
-Smaller runs of products would encourage the owner to value the object as unique, and irreplacable by any substitute, and in this case prices could be reduced to slightly higher than Target prices instead of incredibly high it would require to create a true percieved value from price.
-Objects that are more timeless, or even more difficult to achieve, new but timeless.

Values could be reformed, we currently value convenience at almost the highest level, which is probably, or almost definitely a result of the busy lifestyles we live. And why do we live this lifestyle? to be able to buy more convenient products.
- I once noticed that there are a great amount of old people around the city of Zürich during the day time, they have no job, yet they are not bored, because living their life takes all day, they do little errands, bringing their bottles to recycle, visiting their friends, washing their laundry, and maintaining their homes the old fasion way. The price is lower for doing things the "old fashioned way" and it fills the time that they spare by not having a job. And I suppose the way they use the time is more fulfilling as well, I'd much rather be baking a cake from scratch, and having a spic and span home then working day in day out.

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